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HDS 3612The Intellectual Biography of an Eleventh-Century Transoxanian Legal Scholar, Shams Al-Din al-Sarakhsi: SeminarBaber JohansenDescriptionThe course tries to reconstruct the intellectual biography of an 11th century Transoxanian Muslim jurist whose work has, over the centuries, exerted an important influence on the understanding of Muslim law in Central Asia and the Near East. The most important difficulty we face is the fact that very few biographical data can be gleaned from the secondary literature. We are, therefore, bound to draw the data for his intellectual biography from his work: roughly 40 volumes of legal writing in Arabic. The course will focus on the remarks in which the author develops his understanding of the relation between regional cultures and religious legal doctrines, between genders, classes, and religious communities and in which he situates himself into the field thus delineated. The course will discuss the geographical-cultural horizon of an 11th century Central Asian scholar and it will try to insert these personal reflections into the intellectual and political landscape of 11th century Central Asia and the major inner-Islamic debates of that century. The Arabic texts serving as basis for our discussion will be translated two weeks before the session in which they will be discussed. Enrollment Limited: No
SchedulingHalf Course Relationship to Program Requirements
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